https://vanilla.shipoffools.com/ Fri, 14 Aug 2026 18:40:54 +0000 en Machines communication — Ship of Fools https://vanilla.shipoffools.com/discussion/7019/talking-to-our-machines Thu, 13 Aug 2026 19:26:39 +0000 Heaven jedijudy 7019@/discussions Yelling at Talking to our machines but I can't do a strike out there.

I've lived with my daughter and son-in-law (and adorable granddaughter!) for almost a year now. In that time, the printer has been wildly unpredictable. The last couple of months, we've used all the tricks in our magic hat to get it to print documents and such.

I've shut the printer down, uninstalled and reinstalled it dozens of times. The end of July I had two documents to print and it took me over an hour to finally coax it to print. Just one document. In trying to print the other one, I could swear the printer was laughing and saying, "Not today, Jedi."

So, yesterday I was sitting at my desk in the library, where the three of us have our computers. All of a sudden, the printer starts clicking and clacking. Lo and behold, a document spits out of the thing. It's for my daughter, who is nowhere near her computer. She is in fact folding the laundry!

I walked to the laundry room, and told her she has a miracle document. Her eyes rolled all the way across the street and she told me she has been trying to print out several things, and that was the last day she needed them in hand. What I didn't know until then was that she had gone out that morning and had bought a new printer. It was sitting near the front door.

That razzle-frazzle other printer knew that! It knew a replacement was in the house!

The crazy thing has been printing perfectly ever since, but we keep reminding it that the new printer will be installed and the old one thrown to the depths of Heck if it messes up even one more time. We did move the shiny new printer still in its box to the library where the old printer can see it and hopefully be quaking in its little boots.

Have you all needed to talk to your devices?

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